Nikki Haley’s 3-2-1 Strategy

Nikki Haley’s breakout performance in the first Republican presidential-primary debate was not delivered into a void that responds only to Donald Trump’s dulcet tones. If the post-debate polling of GOP voters is any indication, a meaningful number of Republicans are giving her a real second look.

Haley received more encouraging news on Thursday. A CNN/SSRS poll testing how the Republican field performs in head-to-head matchups against Joe Biden in a general election found that, not only did the former South Carolina governor win more support than Biden, she was the only candidate to beat Biden convincingly — outside the poll’s margin of error.

“Haley’s strength is due in part to having received broader support among white voters with college degrees: she won the support of 51 percent of that group, while the other Republicans in the poll captured 48 percent or less of that vote,” Brittany Bernstein observed. So, that poll suggests that Haley could reconstitute the pre-Trump Republican coalition — that is, if she made it to a general election. But the general electorate and the Republican primary electorate are distinct. Just 31 percent of self-described Republicans are white degree-holders. So, unless Haley can capitalize on an electability narrative (good luck with that), she will need to craft a primary strategy viable enough to convince voters and donors alike.

The Iowa caucuses are going to be tough sledding for Haley. She has been gaining support in the Hawkeye state, though a pre-debate NBC News/Des Moines Register survey found that she trailed both Trump and DeSantis significantly and is locked in a contest for third place with Mike Pence. Even if she can edge out Pence, it’s still a stretch to imagine that Haley’s policy preferences — on abortion, in particular — will appeal to a critical mass of the evangelical voters who dominate the Republican caucuses.

Haley has been devoting time and resources to New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, and the anecdotal evidence her campaign is retailing indicates that Granite State voters are warming to her message. There are too few New Hampshire polls to draw conclusions informed by data, but one recent survey of the state’s Republicans found Haley surging to parity with Ron DeSantis in the race for second place. To recover from a weak showing in Iowa, Haley will need to outperform all of Donald Trump’s rivals and, if not win, demonstrate that she can consolidate the GOP’s anti-Trump vote.

From there, it’s off to a make-or-break contest in the former governor’s home state. There can be only one favorite scion of the Palmetto State in the race if the anti-Trump wing of the GOP is to avoid a multi-candidate pileup. If, however, Haley emerges from the first two nominating contests as Trump’s most viable challenger, she will probably need to notch an outright victory in South Carolina to have the requisite momentum going into the Super Tuesday states.

Call it Nikki Haley’s “3-2-1” strategy. And if we do call it that, we must also concede that the plan is, for now, a tremendous long shot.

The flaws in this approach were exposed the last time it was floated as a viable path to the Republican nomination. It involves too many moving parts. It is dependent on an early winnowing of the field, which assumes collective action from the candidates, each of whom probably imagines that their own version of a similar strategy provides them with the same window of opportunity. And it places a big bet on the notion that Trump’s support will degrade entropically.

Multiple consecutive losses do not add up to a victory. The candidate seeking to win the nomination will need to engineer not just their ascent in the polls but a historic collapse in the support enjoyed by the race’s prohibitive frontrunner. The candidate that does that successfully, whether that’s Haley or anyone else, will do so with a 50-state strategy that takes dead aim at Trump. Elaborate bank shots and tactical cleverness didn’t work in 2016. Why would 2024 be any different?